


Running

by Moirae (TigerDragon), TiaNadiezja



Series: The Doctor and the Constant [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-29
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-23 04:58:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/Moirae, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiaNadiezja/pseuds/TiaNadiezja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death, life, and surviving afterward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running

**Author's Note:**

> One of the saddest pieces of writing I've ever worked on. Also, in my opinion, absolutely gorgeous.
> 
> Please, please, please note the tags.

The Orb Room of the Celestial Manse of Tzen Du was a mass of shattered crystal and glittering witchfire sparks, a crazed sheen of light and adamant droplets hanging in the air, and beyond that gorgeous ruin it held four people and nothing else. One was the body of a woman, dark-haired and sleek, her body bearing no mark or injury save that she was still and cold and utterly lifeless. To the side, half-covered in the broken ruin of a crystalline pillar, a lanky awkward man lay crumpled where a blast of something so unnatural it could be barely be called a weapon had flung him - where his wife had tried to pull him up, then fallen back to leave bloody handprints on the floor where she caught herself. She was the third, her red hair glittering with fragments of crystal, and she was alive - at least, her pulse and her breathing said so. She held the fourth across her lap, a dark-haired man who looked too young for the exhausted, wounded slump of his shoulders. He was dying, and she was fighting him every step of the way.

“I admit... this hurts a good bit less than I expected.  Certainly less than last time.”  The man lay across Amy’s lap, turning his eyes toward the two others who had fallen.  “Or perhaps not.  Perhaps more.”

“You can’t.” Her voice was a trembling whisper, a few tears slowly spilling down her face, and her fingers clung to his cheek as her other hand fluttered half-despairingly across the ruin of his shirt and jacket. “You can’t. Don’t you dare.”

“I don’t want to.”  He reached up, his hand brushing her jaw, his eyes kind above the tattered bow-tie.  “I had so much I wanted to show you.”

“You promised. ‘I always come back.’ You promised me.” She bent, her face almost touching his, her voice breaking on the words even as they struggled out of her like a ragged jester’s chorus. “We haven’t even had a snog in the shrubbery yet.”

He touched her face, tracing her cheek with gentle, exhausted fingers, whispering, “Amy Pond... crying over me.  Guess what?”

“No. Oh, no.” Her heart broke in her eyes, and she tried to kiss him as if that might heal him or hold him just a moment more. “You can’t leave me, you can’t both leave me...”

“I always come back.  It’s just not always me who comes back.”  Then the light came, erupting from every limb, and he was gone.

It drove her back from his lips, that flashing light, and she gave a despairing cry that tore itself out of her heart as though it might take everything else with it and leave her boneless and ragged after, but she wouldn’t - couldn’t - let go even as that golden primordial fire lashed over her and snatched at her clothing and hair.

Within the energy of the Time Lord’s regeneration, eternity was an instant and an instant was an eternity, and life and death, while still meaningful, had far less meaning - or maybe far more.  When the light faded, Amy’s injuries were gone - mended, as if by weeks or months of natural healing, as if her body was able to find exactly what it  _should_ be and return to that.  And laying across her lap was a woman, younger than the Doctor had been, slender and blonde and beautiful.  And the very first thing she did was lean up and press her lips to Amy’s.

Amy shook with surprise, with grief, with sudden exhaustion, and she fell into the kiss as her eyes closed and the tears came and everything fell away from her except the arms that held her up.

When the kiss was done, they had moved the ten meters into the TARDIS, and Amy was leaning back against the wall, with this young, strange, shockingly familiar woman smiling up at her.  “Hello there.  I’m not entirely certain why I did that.  I expect I’m going to do it again.”

“Oh.” Amy looked at her, lost for the first time in so many years - since the moment in her hallway when the raggedy man had demanded to know what had happened to Amelia Pond. Since she’d stood on her wedding day, trying to remember him back into the universe. Her mind tumbled with the idea, grappled with it, couldn’t hold it. Snatched out for something else to hold on to. “Rory... my husband. We can’t leave him. I can’t leave him.”

“Rory...”  The woman visibly searched her memories, then found what she was looking for.  “Rory.”  She turned, pulling the doors back open, and looked out into the Manse.  “There’s nothing dangerous out there right now.  Well... nothing too dangerous.  Well... nothing too dangerous too close.  We could retrieve him...”  She turned to Amy.  “I can’t do anything for him.  I couldn’t even if I was sure who I am, which I’m not, but I can’t.  Still, once is enough.  Wait here.”  Without another word, she stepped out, closing and locking the door behind her.

Amy Pond’s legs gave out, and she slid to the floor of the TARDIS with her face in her hands as the tears rolled over her again.

It was a few moments later that the woman came back in, Rory’s body - significantly larger than her - draped over her shoulder, and her clothes if anything even more tattered than before.  “Right.  It  _is_ dangerous out there.  So we’re going... Leadworth.  That’s right.  Isn’t it?  Leadworth.”

“Leadworth.” Amy laughed into her hands, a wild little sound. “Hello again, Leadworth. Yes, that’s right. He’d want it to be there.”

“Leadworth.  After I remember how to fly the TARDIS.”  The woman leapt over the guardrail to the console.  “I know how to do this... ah, it’s this one!”  She grabbed a large knob, spinning it wildly.

The TARDIS lurched and shuddered and spun, then dropped itself into the same old spot behind the house of Amelia Pond that it always stumbled back to when it was in the neighborhood. Amy tried to get to her feet, half-fell, then reached for the shape under the ragged blanket and fell short. “Doctor....”

“Doctor who?”  The woman paused, blinking.  “Oh, wait, that’s me.”  She rushed over to Amy, taking both her hands and pulling her to her feet.  “Leadworth.  The right place.”  Then she opened the door, gazing out at the house.  “I... can’t come back here.  Not after this time.”

Amy shook, clinging to the Doctor, her voice a whisper. “I have to get him home. I have to say good-bye. I have to. Help me. Please.”

“I’ll help you, Amy Pond.”  The Doctor lifted the corpse effortlessly, then paused.  “No.  This will get me arrested.  We have to make a call... Amy.  Pink cell phone in the drawer under the blue switches.  Bring it here?”

She got the drawer open and the phone to the Doctor with shaking hands, unsteady on her feet but still determined, unstoppably determined Amy Pond. 

The Doctor took the phone, dialing one-handed and lifting it to her ear.  “Martha... yes.  No, this isn’t a wrong number.  It’s me.  The Doctor!  Yes, I’m a woman now.  I need someone there to make a call to the Leadworth police department... yes, Leadworth.  No, no aliens.  I just need it known that, if they ask me any questions, my answers are the truth.  Yes, I’m in Leadworth.  Did you know they only have a post office?  All right, thank you.”  She closed the phone and offered Amy a comforting smile.  “Where should we bring him?  I’m... not very good at this.”

“Inside. We’ll take him inside.” Amy’s voice was a little stronger now - a little steadier. She reached to help the Doctor carry him, realized there was no point, let her hand fall. Led the way, unsteadily, into the big house that had been empty and then her parents’ and then theirs. 

They laid him out on the bed, near the chest full of Amy’s dolls and the gladius Rory never quite parted with, and Amy lay down on their bed with her husband for the last time and kissed his bloodied lips, not caring about the mess it was making of her clothes. Not caring about anything, really, except making him understand how terribly much she’d loved him. Her boy - her Rory.

The tears left trails in the blood on her face.

The Doctor stepped outside the room after placing Rory on the bed, waiting and giving Amy time with her husband, pulling at her ruined clothes.  She untied the bow tie, wrapping it around her wrist, and adjusted the tattered shirt to better cover herself.  After nearly an hour, she opened the door, speaking softly.  “Amy.”

“I know.” Amy’s voice was jagged, rough with spent sobs, and she slowly pushed herself off the bed as she laid one more kiss on his forehead. Looked down at him. Touched the hand that still wore her ring. When she straightened, the Doctor could see her own rings glittering on Rory’s chest where she’d laid them. 

Amelia Pond’s eyes were two green pools of bleak winter pain, but her back was straight. “It’s time to go.”

“We bury our dead.”  The Doctor’s voice had a quiet note of certainty to it.  “They deserve nothing less.”

She looked up slowly meeting his eyes, and her voice was suddenly very soft. “Bring it down. Bring it all down. Isn’t that how the Romans did it - stone and earth?”  
  
“The house.”  The Doctor nodded.  “Outside.  With me.”  She started toward the stairs, rushed down them, and into the kitchen... then paused, staring at the table.

Amy stopped there, leaned against it, looked up at the Doctor from across it with the faintest of smiles. “You remember.”

“Fish fingers and custard.”  The Doctor walked to the cabinet, taking a large bowl and placing it on the table before filling it with custard.  Finally, she removed the bow tie from her wrist, carefully tying it before placing it next to the bowl.  “Now we go.”

Amelia Pond stood in her kitchen for the last time, running her fingers across that bow tie, then nodded silently and went out with the Doctor at her side - across the small, ill-kept garden at the back to the open space by the shed that the TARDIS still filled. She stood with her back to the door, facing the house, and braced herself against that blue wood which wasn’t wood at all. She didn’t speak, gave no sign, but the Doctor could see in her face that it was time.

The Doctor raised her sonic screwdriver, adjusting its setting to maximum, and pressed the button.  A soft hum - quieter than the usual buzzing of the screwdriver, as if deliberately understated - then the whole house simply fell into itself, collapsing so thoroughly that no two bricks remained together.

“Goodbye.”  The Doctor gazed at the ruin for a long moment, tears in her eyes, before turning toward the TARDIS.  “Goodbye, Rory.  And Leadworth.”

“Goodbye.” Amy whispered the word, and then met the Doctor’s eyes. “Take me away from here.”

The Doctor took Amy’s hand, and, once they were inside the TARDIS, did exactly that, pulling them to a place and time as far removed from Leadworth as space and time could be.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

Amy sat in the library of the TARDIS - the new one, without the swimming pool - with her hair loose around her shoulders so that it hid her face almost entirely. Her clothing was rumpled with inattention, her hands loose in her lap, and she stared into the heating grate that looked like a fire as though she couldn’t see it at all. 

She had been there for almost two days now, relative time.

“Amy.”  The voice of the Doctor floated in, over her shoulder, as a soft, melodic tone.  “You’re hiding from me.”

“Hiding? No, not hiding. No place to hide in the TARDIS, is there? She sees me, she tells you, that’s all there is of that.” Amy’s voice was very soft, unreadable. “Avoiding, maybe.”

The Doctor sat on the arm of Amy’s chair, looking down at her with a serious expression.  “Why?”

“Because you’re going to ask me where I want to get off.” Her voice stayed unreadable, her eyes hidden by the fall of her hair, but she pinned the blonde with her voice just as easily as she’d always done to the dark-haired man the Doctor had been. “It’s all over your face the last few weeks - did you think I can’t see it?”

“Do you... want to stay?”  The Doctor fell in to sit with her in the chair.

“Of course I bloody want to stay.” Amy’s head came up, green eyes visible and flashing, and she tightened a hand on the Doctor’s wrist as her voice shook with pain and anger. “I haven’t got anywhere else to go, have I, and he - you - promised me the universe. Everything. I can’t go back without him.”

“Following me... cost you everything.  People usually leave after that...”  The Doctor met Amy’s eyes.  “Try to rebuild.  But, if you want to stay...”

“I haven’t got anything left to lose, have I? You ran away. You and she stole each other, and you both ran away. Have you ever been sorry?” Amy’s voice was still shaking, but the question was a demand.

“Yes.  But I’ve never stopped to think about it.”  The Doctor met Amy’s eyes.  “You... can do it.  Stay.  Stay with me.”

“No. Not stay.” Amy’s fingers wound with the Doctor’s, and she leaned in until their lips nearly touched. “Run. Forever, as long as I last. I want to run and run and never, ever, ever look back.”

“Run.”  The Doctor’s hand wrapped firmly around Amy’s, and she leaned in, resting against the taller woman.  “Together.”

“Yes.” Amy’s lips touched the soft neck under that delicate golden hair, and her voice no longer shook. “Together.”

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of Time Lords switching gender on regeneration was non-canon when we wrote this. Then Neil Gaiman came along and made it canon with "The Doctor's Wife," so we're now all official and everything.
> 
> The idea for this story came from me wondering what it would take to make Amy Pond a permanent companion of the Doctor's, and what the next Doctor might be like. After that, it kind of wrote itself.


End file.
